


Assignment: Aegis

by ms_prue



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Admiral made them do it, F/M, Hook-Up, Turians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-28
Updated: 2012-04-28
Packaged: 2017-11-04 11:52:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ms_prue/pseuds/ms_prue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Still nursing bruises from the battle for the Citadel, Shepard heads out to Aegis, a pan-species social club located on the Wards, to fix her sobriety problem. But since when has any mission turned out the way it was supposed to?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Assignment: Aegis

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler warning for all the first Mass Effect. I only just finished my first play-through, but already I'm deeply fond of those IKEA space bases, the crap-shoot handling of the Mako and, of course, the voice of doom that launched a thousand Alliance ass-covering covert ops... Ladies and gentlebeings, he was up all night chain-smoking cigars and gargling brandy and antacids before declaring the situation impossible and calling in humanity's favourite Spectre to Get It Done - presenting to you the pride of the Fifth Fleet, the Alliance's alpha dog - the one, the only, Admiral Steven Hackett!

Shepard is a full 17 hours into a 48-hour stint of R&R on what's left of the Citadel after Saren and the geth have finished with it. Sovereign, too, but the Reaper isn't being mentioned in polite company, apparently. Shepard feels well and truly over polite company. Her sleep debt is finally discharged, and it's now time to fix this terrible sobriety problem she's been having. 

Choosing an outfit is difficult - a definite sign she's spent too much time in combat gear lately. She settles on black drill cargo trousers and a teal merino pullover. The footwear is still a problem, as is the lack of armour plating on her outer layers. She settles on a compromise - armour-plated shoes - and pulls a pair of heavy combat boots out of her locker to complete her look. Hell, it's not like her dancing is going to suffer any more than it does already. And if there is trouble, she can always kick any attackers to death.

Then it's time to hit the town. Or what's left of it.

"Commander Shepard", the Avina terminal greets her. "How may I assist you this evening?"

"I need a recommendation for a bar."

"Certainly. I can provide you with a shortlist of drinking establishments on the Citadel that cater to human clientele. What additional criteria do you wish to base your selection on?"

Shepard rubs the bruise on her shoulder absently, the one she got from firing too many slugs to count into the bastard Saren's Reaper-reanimated corpse. Her love for her Spectre-grade shotgun runs very deep, but so does the soft tissue trauma caused by its mulish recoil. The only thing she wants to shoot in the next 24 hours is the breeze, and not very much of that, either. 

"I want somewhere fun and uncomplicated," she tells Avina. "No quasar machines. No guns. And definitely no strippers." Somewhere she hasn't had dodgy business proposition or a shoot-out. Surely that's not too much to ask?

"Would you prefer a location on the Presidium or Wards?"

"Wards. Diplomats are not my idea of fun."

"Your criteria have been noted. One establishment matches all your search parameters. Aegis is a pan-species social club located on the Wards that serves alcoholic beverages suitable for human consumption. It has a strict no-weapons door policy and unobtrusive but effective security staff who ensure a relaxed yet secure atmosphere. It is open to the public, but is especially popular with off-duty C-Sec employees. It sustained no damage during the recent emergency and is open for trading."

"Sounds perfect."

"Is there anything else I can assist you with today, Commander?"

"Yes. Please tell me the best way to get to Aegis without having to talk to anybody."

Aegis turns out to be exactly Shepard's kind of place. The bouncers eye her boots suspiciously but make no objection. The music, considerately chosen to avoid exacerbating stress-related headaches, is not bass-heavy and only just loud enough to hear over the muttered complaints of all the C-Sec officers who've just come off what has to have been a very difficult clean-up shift. And, best of all, there are no autograph hunters, domestic disputes, supplicants, diplomats or hostiles between her and a row of five unoccupied stools at the bar. She takes the seat in the middle of the breach, orders a beer and settles in, trusting in the protective properties of conspicuously unoccupied chairs to send a sign to the rest of the universe to fuck off while serious drinking is in progress.

The empty-seat voodoo magic works well enough through the first beer, but then the second arrives, and so does company.

"Hello, Commander Shepard," says the shinest turian she's ever seen as he slides onto the seat next to her. She considers the tactical wisdom of glassing the smug fucker - why is it that everyone on this Reaper-cursed station knows her name? - but it would be a terrible waste of a drink, especially this early in the night, at the only bar on the Citadel she stands a chance of becoming fond of.

"The name's Atticus," the turian continues, undeterred.

"Hello, Atticus," she replies frostily. Might as well just get this over with as quickly as possible instead. "What do you want?"

"I just came over to welcome you to this fine establishment."

"Bullshit. Listen, Atticus, I am off duty. That means no autographs, no pictures, no geth hunting tips. I am not granting interviews or endorsements at this time. I am not interested in any smuggling opportunities you might know about and I will not be solving your personal problems for goodwill or credits. The only issue on my agenda this evening is my own private vendetta against my liver, and I don't need your help with that. So please, say your piece in as few words as possible, and then I can tell you to fuck off, and you can leave me alone."

"Ah," says the turian, "I see. You're here for the liquor."

"Yes. Is that a problem?"

"Not at all. I just... I was curious if you were here for something else, too."

"I thought I liked the no-weapons policy, but I'm beginning to reconsider."

"Despite, ah, recent events, there are many other places still open that serve recreational intoxicants on the Citadel," says Atticus. "Of course, not all of them are interspecies-friendly pick-up joints. I guess I'm just curious to find out why the famous Commander Shepard chooses to drink here, of all places." He fixes her with his piercing avian gaze, but his tone is light. "Tongues and tongue-like appendages might wag."

She takes another long pull of her beer and considers this new information. After all, it's not like humans are her favourite species at the moment. The Council has repaid her kind-hearted decision under fire to save them from certain death by deciding to fuck her (and, less immediately, the rest of the galaxy) over by keeping Sovereign and the Reaper threat to themselves, and humanity's representatives to the Citadel have gone along with it for the measly promise of a Council seat. But Murphy's Law says they still won't be too busy arguing over who should become humanity's Councillor to condemn the actions of the first human Spectre, the hero of the Battle of the Citadel, despite all that, if the moral outrage factor is strong enough.

She can feel a dull throb behind her eyes starting again.

Fuck it, she decides, if news of the infamous Commander Shepard picking up turians at an interspecies meat-market distresses them, then distressing them is fine with her.

She takes a deep breath and cracks her neck. Atticus is very shiny. Maybe he's fun and uncomplicated, too.

The throbbing in her head starts to fade away.

"Forgive me, but I have to say - you're possibly the shiniest turian I've ever seen. How do you manage that?"

Atticus laughs, and Shepard suddenly wishes she knew more about turian body language so she could see if he's hiding a blush under there, too.

"Oh, you know, good genetics helps. So do regular trips to the grooming salon. You didn't think this lustre was all natural, did you?" 

"I honestly don't know. I'm familiar with turian weaponry and military culture, and that's about it. I had no idea being shiny was important."

"I don't think it's important to most turians," Atticus explains, choosing his words carefully. "But it's certainly important to me."

"Why's that?"

"It's my experience that many humans are very attracted to shiny things."

That makes her laugh, and he looks pleased.

"You mean attracted in a 'hello stranger, let's take this back to my place' kind of way?"

"Sometimes, yes." His mandibles flare in what Shepard has come to believe is a hungry or expectant grin, the kind expression she sees on Garrus when he's lost in the moment, lining up a target so far away she can't even make out what colour armour they're wearing. She thinks she should feel similarly lined up for the kill, but her feet want to tap inside her combat boots and her hips want to swing and swivel on the bar stool. It's a dance, she realises, not chase. For an instant she wishes she'd worn different shoes.

"But no matter how shiny and attractive you are on the outside, your exoskeleton must make things a little difficult for your humans. Wouldn't it feel to them like making love to a suit of armour?"

"I'm only shiny on the outside, Commander. Underneath the exoskeleton I'm as soft and squishy as the best of you furry mammals." His mandibles flare incredibly wide for a moment, quickly replaced by a more human-friendly grin with fewer exposed pointy teeth. "If you buy me a drink I might even show you."

Shepard looks him in the eye, challenging.

"What about the wagging tongues?"

"You're right," he chuckles. "If word gets out I've sampled the famous human Spectre, everyone here will be falling over themselves to buy me a drink. This round's on me."

The drinks arrive. The two beers seem awfully intimate on their own, so Shepard orders a couple of whiskey chasers to keep them company.

As the empties start to line up, she begins to lose track of whose round it is, and, more worryingly, who's flirting with who.

"What makes you so certain I'm going to go home with you anyway, Atticus?" she says, retreating back to the relative safety of bluntness.

"Well," says the turian, taking the return to plain speech in his stride, "in the event that my good looks and raffish charm didn't work, I was going to make you an offer you couldn't resist."

"Such as?"

"A private tour of my apartment here on the Citadel."

"And how is that supposed to be irresistible?"

"I didn't want to mention it earlier, given what you said about being off-duty," he whispers conspiratorially, "But it's simply crawling with biotic terrorists."

"Uh-huh," she says, trying to hide her smile behind the beer. "Not interested."

"That's not all. There's also rachni under my sink. I can't even go near the kitchen any more."

"Nice try, but still no."

"Well, I'm also pretty sure my human flatmate is working for Cerberus."

"You don't have a human flatmate."

"You could be right. He's probably been eaten by rachni by now."

She can't help it any more - beer snorts up her nose as she convulses with laughter. She reaches blindly for the nearby stack of napkins before she can embarrass herself any further.

"You know, I've never met a turian like you before."

"A turian you find attractive?" he says, and this time she doesn't even bother to cover her amusement.

"A turian who'd lie about terrorists and rachni to get me to go home with him. I thought your people were honest to a fault."

Atticus leans back on his bar stool and sighs wistfully.

"Ah, but it's not just for myself. I thought together we could have a shot at improving the historically tense relations between our two species."

"A noble goal. But maybe you should choose someone who's more, um, experienced at turian-human relations."

Shepard doesn't even realise she's picking at the label on her beer bottle until Atticus reaches out and takes her hand.

"I think you'll do just fine," he says gently. "But I can also see you're not going to let yourself be convinced of that, no matter how obviously interested you are. Not to worry," he continues in a louder voice, undoubtably for the benefit of the volus sitting nearby who appears to be taking odds on the likelihood of Atticus and Shepard leaving together, "I've still got one more trick up my sleeve, as you humans say."

He brings his other arm up onto the bar, revealing the orange of his omnitool. A familiar face flickers into being above the beer-stained teak veneer, followed by an all-too-familiar gravelly voice.

"General Atticus. Ah, and Commander Shepard, I see. I sincerely hope this is a social call."

Time seems to slow down. She can feel every single milligram of alcohol in her bloodstream as it weighs down her brain and slows her reflexes to the speed of treacle. She hopes desperately that the row of empty glasses ranked on the bar just behind Atticus's arm are out of shot of the comm link, and that the hush from the rest of the bar behind them is a coincidence only, and not brought on by scores of heads suddenly being craned in their direction.

"Admiral Hackett. Um, nice to see you, sir."

"Thanks for picking up, Admiral. Sorry to interrupt you at work with a personal call."

Atticus doesn't look or sound drunk, despite having consumed a quantity of liquor she knows from first-hand experience would have another turian of her acquaintance singing sea shanties by now. Damn him.

"Is that drink in your hand, Atticus?" says Hackett. "I see you're off-duty. Glad to see you having fun for a change, Shepard."

"Oh, I don't know about that," says the sneaky, double-crossing _general_ , who unfortunately also happens to be the first person of any species she's even considered taking to bed in a very long time. "Shepard's been very resistant to the idea of having a good time."

Shepard can feel her cheeks start to flare bright red. She hopes that won't show up on the comm's picture, either.

"Is that so? Relax, Commander. That's an order. Stick close to the General; he'll take good care of you."

The sneaky, shiny, hawk-eyed bastard. She's going to make him pay for this. She is going to find every soft, squishy, vulnerable part of his body and make him scream for mercy, over and over again.

"Of course, Admiral."

"Have a drink for me, too. Meantime, some of us have got to work. Fifth Fleet out."

The comm link closes. Shepard picks up one of the whiskey glasses, empty now except for the ice, and holds it to her cheek to try and neutralise the stinging blush.

"That's cheating," she tells Atticus.

"I'm sorry, I'm just a simple turian. I'm not familiar with that concept," he grins, and knocks back the last of his whiskey. "Perhaps you'd like to go somewhere quieter and explain it?"

"Somewhere like your place?"

"For example."

"I don't think so. I've heard it's full of rachni and biotic terrorists and half-eaten Cerberus operatives."

Shepard picks up his hand and laces her fingers around his, savouring the alien feel of his skin against hers. 

"I've got a better idea. My quarters on the Normandy are very quiet and, most importantly, heavily fortified in the event of rachni or terrorist infestation. What do you say?"

"I'd say I can't think of a better place to progress human-turian relations than a human-turian warship."

"Anything I can do to bring humanity closer to the rest of the galactic community," she says with pretend humility.

"Commander Shepard," Atticus murmurs, pulling her hand up to what, on a human, would be his lips, and on a turian is a body part she intends to learn the name of as soon as possible, "you won't regret this cultural exchange."

"You know, General Atticus, I believe you're entirely correct."


End file.
